A bill barring domestic abusers from having access to guns won initial approval in the Colorado Senate on Friday despite arguments the bill was unworkable and wouldn't help victims.

Senate Bill 197 creates a mechanism to remove guns from people who are prohibited in federal law from possessing firearms because of certain types of domestic violence convictions or domestic violence protection orders.

"One of the gravest dangers a woman can face is an abuser with a gun," said Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster.

In 2011 in Colorado, 13 people were shot and killed by domestic violence offenders who under federal law should not have had firearms, bill supporters say.

Under the bill, courts would be required to order anyone subject to a domestic violence protection order or convicted of domestic violence to relinquish their guns within 24 hours. A judge could extend that to 72 hours.

The person to relinquish the firearms could store them with a law enforcement agency or a federally licensed firearms dealer or sell or transfer them to someone else through a dealer.

The person relinquishing the guns would have to show a receipt of relinquishment within three days to a court.

The right to the guns could be restored after a protection order had been lifted.

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Republicans said the bill would essentially amount to gun confiscation, forcing people to sell their guns for next-to-nothing if they can't find a firearms dealer or local sheriff willing to hold their guns. And because the law applies even in cases of protective orders, someone would have be forced to give up their guns even before being convicted of a crime, GOP senators said.

Supporters, though, said 19 other states have similar laws and it has worked in those places.

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud,who opposed the measure in committee, said the bill would not protect domestic violence victims.

"There's so many ways they (abusers) can get around this," Lundberg said. "First off, they don't have to tell you where the guns are. If they intend violence, if they intend to continue the pattern of domestic violence, they're not going to tell where the guns are.

"Or they're going to find a baseball bat or they're going to find a knife."

Still, one pro-gun Democrat who has said she wouldn't support several other Democratic gun control bills spoke in favor of Senate Bill 197.

"We are not talking about the he/said she said" situations, said Sen. Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge. "This is not the he-threw-the-coffee-cup-at-the-wall-and-it-shattered. We are talking about very serious circumstances. We are talking about stalking, we are talking about harassing."

The Senate still must take a recorded vote on the bill, something expected to happen Monday. If it passes, the bill then heads to the House.

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